Can ‘farting’ copepods affect the climate? IOW expedition on methane production of zooplankton

Methane is an important greenhouse gas with a strong potential to impact climate de-velopment on earth. There are, however, huge gaps in the knowledge concerning indi-vidual sources of methane and to which extent they have an actual impact on the atmos-phere. On August 6, 2016, a research team under the lead of the Leibniz Institute for Bal-tic Sea Research Warnemünde (IOW) set out aboard the research vessel ALKOR for a 3-week cruise into the central Baltic Sea to examine for the first time systematically, whether certain, at times very abundant copepods and their microbial gut flora produce substantial amounts of atmospherically effective methane.

Read the full press release: